| Killed in action. | Wounded. | Missing. | Died of diseases. | Invalided. | |
| British officers | 9 | 21 | — | ||
| British non-commissioned officers | 6 | 9 | — | 4 | 15 |
| Rank and file | 181 | 603 | 13 | 206 | 469 |
| Gun-carriers | 9 | 56 | — | 16 | 28 |
| Stretcher-bearers | — | — | — | — | |
| Clerks | — | — | — | 1 | 1 |
| Carriers | 10 | 33 | — | 40 | 24 |
| Total | 215 | 725 | 13 | 270 | 567 |
The strength of the Gold Coast Regiment actually in the field never much exceeded 900 rifles. The total of effectives belonging to the Regiment at any one time in East Africa never numbered much more than 3000, and from first to last the total number of officers and men of all ranks dispatched did not amount to much more than 3800. When these facts are remembered, the above table will be found strikingly to illustrate the severity of the fighting in which the Regiment took so active a part, and to indicate the ravages caused by disease to which prolonged strain and hardship exposed it.
Meanwhile the recruiting efforts made by the Government of the Gold Coast, to which during 1917-18 Captain Armitage, C.M.G., D.S.O., the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, had devoted special energy and enthusiasm, had resulted in the collection of a very large number of recruits at the various training-depôts throughout the Colony, Ashanti, and the Northern Territories; and the Regiment had proved itself to possess such fine qualities that, as the early end of the war was not at that time anticipated, the War Office decided to convert it from a battalion to a brigade. This consisted of four full battalions with a battery of four 2·75 guns, and a battery of eight Stokes guns, and it was constituted a brigade as from the 1st November, 1918, under the command of Brigadier-General Rose. It was an open secret that, as soon as its organization was complete, the Second West African Brigade, as it was now called, was to be dispatched on active service to Palestine.
Then, during the closing days of October and the first half of November, came the dramatic collapse of the Central Powers and of their Allies—the débacle in the Balkans, the surrender of Turkey, the rout of the Austro-Hungarian armies on the Italian front, the succession of hammer-blows delivered on the western front from the Swiss frontier to the sea, and finally the Armstice granted to a defeated, crime-stained enemy, the terms of which exactly reflected the magnitude of the Allies’ victory, and the extent to which Germany and Germans had forfeited the trust and the respect of all mankind.
The reading of those terms from the balcony of the Public Offices at Accra to a large concourse of people, almost beside themselves with enthusiasm and delight, was recognized as closing the short career of the Gold Coast Service Brigade; and by the end of the following December its disbandment was completed. It had existed long enough, however, to enable the Gold Coast to boast that it, no less than its neighbour the huge territory of Nigeria, had been able to raise by voluntary enlistment a full brigade of soldiers for the service of the Empire in the Great War.
APPENDIX I
THE MOUNTED INFANTRY OF THE GOLD COAST| REGIMENT
There is another Gold Coast unit, which never served with the rest of the Regiment, and which remained behind in Portuguese East Africa when the remainder of the battalion returned to the West Coast, and of its short but adventuresome career some brief account must here be given.
At the end of February, 1918, nearly two months after the arrival of Colonel Goodwin with the main body of the Gold Coast Regiment at Port Amelia, Lieutenant G. H. Parker, who has been mentioned in an earlier chapter as having been in temporary command of the Battery, was chosen by Colonel Rose to raise and train a small body of Mounted Infantry. He was told to pick out for this purpose, from a newly arrived draft of recruits from the Gold Coast, 170 men; and to him were attached Lieutenants Drummond and Saunders, and five British non-commissioned officers.